Illinois Planned Parenthood Clinic Sees Influx of Patients After Supreme Court Ruling

Friday, June 23rd, 2023 -- 1:01 PM

(By Bridgit Bowden, Wisconsin Public Radio) Every Wednesday morning at 6 a.m., Heather Ellingson packs up her car, picks up a coworker, and makes the two-hour drive from Madison to Waukegan, Illinois.

The Planned Parenthood nurse spends two days each week at the Waukegan clinic, working with patients who are getting abortion procedures. She said the trip just makes sense. "Most of these are our patients," she said. "So many people, patients from Wisconsin, we see in Waukegan."

Saturday marks one year since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving the legality of abortion up to individual states.

In Wisconsin, nearly all abortions became illegal immediately, as an 1800s-era law that is still on the books took effect again. One year after the Dobbs decision, things look quite a bit different for Wisconsinites on both sides of the issue.

As legal abortions have ceased in the state, patients, providers and protesters are making the trip to Illinois, Minnesota and other states where it's still legal. Planned Parenthood of Illinois reported a 54 percent increase in abortion patients since last summer, many of them coming from other states. 

But despite all the interstate travel, the numbers have not evened out, said University of Wisconsin-Madison obstetrics and gynecology professor Jenny Higgins, who directs the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity.

A recent study by #WeCount, a national abortion reporting project, found an average of 5,377 fewer abortions were provided per month nationwide in the six months following the Dobbs decision. It's too soon to know how the ban is affecting birth rates in Wisconsin, as those numbers have yet to be reported by the state.

But Higgins looks to the closures of abortion clinics in Green Bay and Appleton in 2013 and 2015 to predict what may happen. The birth rates went up in those areas, she said, and she expects to see the same thing in Wisconsin going forward.

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